If it's Tuesday, the end of Title 42 pandemic-era border policy could come any minute as migrants, border communities, and the White House all braised for a decision from the Supreme Court and a potential surge in border crossings.

Plus, winter storm night wear, the nationwide death toll now over 60, as tens of thousands of travelers are stranded

after Southwest Airlines cancel so many flights that the Biden administration is looking

into what went wrong.

And Congressman-elect George Santos now admitting he lied about his college education, his work on Wall Street,

and more the Republican who flipped a house seat in November, defiant in the face of calls

for him to resign, insisting he will be sworn into office.

Music Welcome to meet the press now.

We begin today waiting for a decision from the Supreme Court on the pandemic era public health directive known as Title 42. At any moment, the High Court could decide to let the program expire.

Title 42 allows border officials to turn away most asylum seekers due to concerns about COVID.

After a series of legal challenges, the policy was set to expire last week, but the Supreme Court issued a temporary stay.

Now, a group of Republican state attorneys general who sued to keep Title 42 in place

say the policy is necessary to stem illegal immigration. They argue lifting it now would

cause a surge at the border on top of the record number of crossings we've already seen

in 2022.

Immigration advocates argue Title 42 violates the right to asylum that is protected under U.S.

law and thousands of migrants coming to the border are fleeing violence in their home countries.

Now, the Biden administration has asked the Supreme Court for a short pause on lifting Title 42 until today so they could prepare resources at the border. My NBC news colleague Sam Brock filed this report

from El Paso earlier today. On the streets of El Paso, temperatures were in the 30s again

overnight. There's so many people just trying to stay warm. The issue right now, capacity at shelters. I'm standing next to a church here. The church next to me has a capacity about a couple hundred people in the basement. It's full. So you're finding folks in the crevice between the metal gate and the building itself on the dirt there in sleeping bags if they're lucky or blankets that they have received, not necessarily from the government, but from local charity groups here and from Good Samaritans who are handing out clothes and food and other forms of aid. Behind me, you see all the folks that are huddled here. This was all bodies in blankets this morning, all crammed together. There's a bus next to them where you can go for brief respites of warmth, but otherwise they're dealing with these frigid conditions. And I'm also talking to people who are coming largely from Venezuela, some from Honduras, who waited months to get to this day because they were promised, they believe, from the administration here, the Title 42 was going to be lifted on December 21st. That's when a federal judge said it was going to be pulled away. And yet,

the Supreme Court, of course, issued that stay. And so now they are all here in limbo.

Those images just stunning. Of course, here's the real issue, folks, to really fix the asylum

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